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The Matrix films (or how/why did the Wachowskis muck up the sequels so badly?)

Started by Blinder Data, August 09, 2021, 05:17:53 PM

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Old Nehamkin

Quote from: phantom_power on September 12, 2021, 09:12:58 AM
I think "in universe" Morpheus is dead so the recast is due to that rather than any beef with Fishburne

Didn't his death only occur in some defunct MMO game that nobody remembers or cares about, though?

Replies From View

Did Morpheus survive the third film?  Honestly can't remember him doing anything after that morale-boosting speech he gave before all the ravers some four hours earlier.


I recall a couple of asides with bit-characters, actually.  A woman who was maybe an old lover or something, and telling a commanding officer about prophecies.  But did these happen in the third film?  Why was he brushed aside to give that sycophantic wiener kid such prominence?

mothman

On Marcus Chong: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/may/20/news

Hollywood is full of stories of actors who "got too big for their boots" and made excessive demands then found they were all too replaceable. That's not always the full or true story, mind. In this case, I noticed one line from his Wikipedia page:

QuoteThe documentary "The Marcus Chong Story" by Marcus Chong was released in 2018.

Bleakness ahoy! Ego? Or the only way he could have a voice? His filmography over the past 20 years is less than stellar...

Mister Six

Quote from: mothman on September 11, 2021, 06:26:55 PM
J. Michael Straczynski's (who worked with them on Netflix show Sense8) book on writing, and he recalls a falling out he had with them (this was before Sense8 but they'd apparently known each other for years) after he wrote them a list of six key things he thought was wrong with Jupiter Ascending after seeing a preview.

Does it say what the six things were? I'm intrigued.

mothman

No, unfortunately not. Would have liked to know. Get the impression it's not an episode he wanted to dwell on overly.

Custard

1. The story
2. The characters
3. The dialogue
4. Catering
5. The Rik Waller soundtrack
6. Rik Waller at catering


Custard

When the little girl painted the sky at the end, she Tippex-ed out Morpheus

13 schoolyards

Quote from: Replies From View on September 12, 2021, 06:42:15 AM
Maybe they should have found a time to film when Hugo Weaving was available and Keanu Reeves was allowed to shave.


Weren't there a whole bunch of photos from last year of Reeves walking to or from set with no beard and a shaved head?

An tSaoi

Quote from: Glebe on September 11, 2021, 11:20:11 PM
Fuck's sake, sorry, Lilly Wachowski rather.

Wait, the other one's trans too? This passed me by completely.

Good luck to her, fair play etc, but what are the chances of that? Two siblings being trans, is that common?

Edit: I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just interesting.

Spiteface

Quote from: Replies From View on September 12, 2021, 06:42:15 AM
Maybe they should have found a time to film when Hugo Weaving was available and Keanu Reeves was allowed to shave.

They should have got the CGI team that worked on the Joss Whedon cut of Justice League.

Replies From View

Quote from: Spiteface on September 12, 2021, 05:54:18 PM
They should have got the CGI team that worked on the Joss Whedon cut of Justice League.

I did already bamlem that I'm afraid

Quote from: Replies From View on September 11, 2021, 01:20:56 PM
I bamlem Justice League moustache debacles.

Shaky

Quote from: 13 schoolyards on September 12, 2021, 04:37:30 PM
Weren't there a whole bunch of photos from last year of Reeves walking to or from set with no beard and a shaved head?

Yep, and he did some promo thing with Alex Winter sans hair.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Shameless Custard on September 10, 2021, 08:00:04 PM
I liked Dark City, but can't remember much about it. Time to rewatch both, I think!

Two important things to remember about Dark City:
1) Kiefer Sutherland overacts terribly in it.
2) One of the main characters is Inspector Bumstead.

Chollis

honestly can't remember what even happens at the end of Revolutions and i'm not watching it again. can someone tell me. i don't know what's going on in this trailer but it'll be shit i reckon

Bad Ambassador

The Machines agree a ceasefire with the humans while Neo defeats Smith, who's taking over the whole system and threatens to tank the Machine mainframe, destroying humans and Machines alike. Neo is blinded by someone who's been possessed by Smith in the real world but he and Trinity kill him. They travel to the Machine city, but Trinity dies when their hovercraft crashes. Neo fights Smith in the Matrix and wins but apparently dies. The Machines and the humans continue the ceasefire, while the Oracle watches the sun rising over the now-restored and not-that-sickly-green-any-more city.

I watched it again recently, and you can see a more interesting film trying to get out of the sequels, but too many of the ideas are quite poorly developed. As mentioned earlier, Neo's powers have been downgraded so he no longer has god-level control of the Matrix and the slow-motion is used for everything, rather than just things which are only possible in the Matrix. Neo crashing a sentinel at the end of Reloaded is never explained.


Replies From View

QuoteNeo crashing a sentinel at the end of Reloaded is never explained.

But it handily means he can crash a load of them whilst travelling through the machine city.

Blumf

Quote from: Bad Ambassador on September 13, 2021, 01:07:30 PM
Neo crashing a sentinel at the end of Reloaded is never explained.

The obvious explanation is that they're still in the Matrix, just a different level designed as a catch for the rebels. It's not like any of that 'real' world made much sense anyway.[nb]How did the first escapees survive when you need your real body repairing with days/weeks/months of treatment? Why did the machines leave it until the films before trying to destroy the place? Machine thinking would suggest attacking the place ASAP. etc. etc.[/nb]

Spiteface

Quote from: MojoJojo on September 13, 2021, 11:43:29 AM
Two important things to remember about Dark City:
1) Kiefer Sutherland overacts terribly in it.
2) One of the main characters is Inspector Bumstead.

3 & 4) Melissa George's breasts.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Blumf on September 13, 2021, 03:48:51 PM
How did the first escapees survive when you need your real body repairing with days/weeks/months of treatment?
And what did they eat? Did they find puddles of that slimy gruel stuff just sitting on the ground?

idunnosomename

The cross which comes out of Neo's body as he apparently dies to kill Smith is the most on the nose bit of symbolism ive ever seen. At the time i found it insultingly shit.

13 schoolyards

Quote from: Blumf on September 13, 2021, 03:48:51 PM
The obvious explanation is that they're still in the Matrix, just a different level designed as a catch for the rebels. It's not like any of that 'real' world made much sense anyway.

I assumed - and it was a big assumption - that Neo's ability to control "The Matrix" basically meant he could now hack all computers using his brain's natural wi-fi or something. Which you'd think would have been really handy back at Zion but I guess he was basically a nuclear option for the humans - once he got to the machine city he could have just brain zapped everyone and trashed the place if they didn't agree to his scheme to... die in the Matrix?

Quote from: Blumf on September 13, 2021, 03:48:51 PM
.[nb]How did the first escapees survive when you need your real body repairing with days/weeks/months of treatment? Why did the machines leave it until the films before trying to destroy the place? Machine thinking would suggest attacking the place ASAP. etc. etc.[/nb]

Presumably the first time around surviving regular humans left over from the war (and still eating tinned food at la every post apocalyptic movie ever) would have been grabbing humans out of the battery and fixing them up, and then every time after that the machines left just enough people behind after going murder happy in Zion to start the process over again. Because humans are their crops and when "The One" happens it's time to harvest or something oh god I've thought about this too much.


idunnosomename

You can just say the first few humans were taken out of The Matrix by the machines each time to set up the whole loop of Zion/the one.

Dont really care, the setup ceases to be interesting once it gets past "what if the real world were just a computer simulation run by machines" into "what if that real world was also potentially a simulation". It just gets intentionally confusing and just unfufilling.

Remember the reboot at the end of Revolutions is the seventh one: aaaaaah like the bible.

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: Lord Mandrake on September 11, 2021, 07:27:45 PM
Oscar Issac can apparently go from clean shaven to full beard in 4 days. That's why he's the go to guy in tinseltown. Reeves's hair game is on the wane,   his curtains are held together with Dax and the beard never really filled in.
You do wonder when actors go for that lank greasy thing if they're afraid to wash their hair in case it falls out. Better to cover it with scum.

Here's a pic of Keanu with short hair for Matrix 4. Looks fine, although someone should cook him a good dinner. Hopefully when he decides to kick ass he'll shave his hair and get buff in a montage to some pumping Kenny Loggins song.

mothman


Replies From View

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on September 13, 2021, 06:14:57 PM
Looks fine, although someone should cook him a good dinner.

Maybe it's for the slimy incubator scene stuff, where they always look a bit emaciated.

samadriel

Quote from: Blumf on September 13, 2021, 03:48:51 PMWhy did the machines leave it until the films before trying to destroy the place? Machine thinking would suggest attacking the place ASAP. etc. etc.
The machines didn't know where Zion was. I think it was Cypher who offered them the location of Zion in exchange for being put back into the Matrix?

13 schoolyards

Yet another plot hole: in the first film they're torturing Morpheus so he'll give them the location of Zion (well, the "codes to the Zion mainframe", which would be pretty useless without knowing where it is). He escapes without giving it up, then in that Animatrix short set just before the second film the machines have somehow found out where it is without him and have started drilling towards it.

And then it's revealed that they've always known where Zion is because every couple of decades they blow it up to start the cycle all over again, so what was the point of capturing Morpheus in the first place?

Mr Trumpet

They always knew where it was. They just didn't move against it until the appropriate time, after The One has appeared in the Matrix.

All Cypher offered was access to Morpheus. They wanted the codes from him but he didn't know them. Presumably plan A is to hack into the city and destroy it when Neo has his encounter with the god architect. Plan B is the big frontal attack they ended up going with.